I don't know how bad the West is for us. I do know that we owe it a lot. From our independence (no one ever mentions Navarino in 1827, when Western navies helped salvage our battle for independence) to our love of ourselves.
If any Western import has harmed Greece, it's been neither rationalism, nor the political system, nor technology. It's been the idea of the continuity of Hellenic civilization.
Oddly, this idea, which today is waved about like a banner by anti-Westerners, is an entirely Western notion. Foreign "Philhellenes" uncovered our ancient monuments, and it was they who taught us to believe that we were the immediate successors to the ancients, responsible for the continuation of their traditions. The Romioi of the 18th century didn't feel Greek-much less of the ancient variety. They were a Balkan nation, originating from the admixture of many races and cultural traditions, with their own attitudes and ways of thinking. Out of the blue, the Western "Philhellenes" (and their mimics, our own "scholars") stuck a helmet on their head, dubbed them keepers of the ancient flame, and injected them with a passion for purity.
Pure race, ergo, pure language. How this nation has suffered in the name of purity! It was a first in the history of linguistics: the creation of an artificial language, a retro-dialect. All impurities were rooted out, place names were changed, history was distorted-for the sake of proving...what? That Greece was not a Balkan nation like the others, but a racially pure aristocracy, not only of the region but of the whole world. Like certain pseudo-bluebloods who fake their family trees to prove their superiority.
But you don't become worthy on the strength of your lineage, but on the basis of your achievements. The son of a Nobel prizewinner has no birthright to a Nobel prize. The ancient Greeks belong to the whole world, especially to those who study them. An English classicist at Oxford is nearer to the ancients than an ignorant Greek.
Yet even today our intellectuals call the Greeks "the aristocracy of nations." Even today many (most) Greeks believe in their hearts that we are a chosen people. This is why we're always complaining about the way we're treated. Like spoiled children, we demand of everyone their unconditional support-even when we're wrong. And we insist on believing that we're always being cheated, ignoring the fact that we happen to be the only country in the region to have doubled its size in the last 150 years. We've woven endless conspiracy theories so as to absolve ourselves of responsibility, and to cast the blame on others instead. Our belief in our superiority shows up clearly in our racist attitudes. What Greek doesn't consider himself better than the Turk, the Albanian, or the "Gypsy-Skopjan"? Go ask an Greek educated audience about Turkish civilization-they're certain to chuckle.
Well, this Greek, this Greek who asks the world "Do you know who I am?", who shouts at demonstrations, who denies the Other his basic human rights, who has conducted pogroms against his Jewish (in the past) and Muslim (today) compatriots, who ends up shooting (by mistake) the Albanian and the gypsy; this Greek, I don't like. And on this point I remain, incurably, an anti-Hellene.p